


light (and the spaces between it)

by superfluouskeys



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/F, Goodbyes, Mass Effect 2, POV First Person, Post-Campaign, Renegade Shepard (Mass Effect)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-06 07:32:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11595885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superfluouskeys/pseuds/superfluouskeys
Summary: "I have seen you do things, allow things, that would compel me to violence against you if I were not sworn to your service," Samara continues, and I'm not sure why the comment stings.  Of course she has.  A far less stringent code of justice would line up pretty neatly against me on my best days.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I adore Samara, but I also love playing a renegade asshole. Prompt response for two things: "empty" and "Kisses because I don’t want you to go and maybe I can convince you to stay just a few minutes longer"

I never really thought to doubt myself before now.  Maybe I didn't have the time.  Maybe I didn't have the luxury.  Most people don't care for my methods, but they change their tune when they see my results.  I guess if I've learned anything of any real, over-arching importance, it's that if you second-guess yourself too much in high-risk situations, you get yourself killed, or you lose people you...

Well.  You lose people.

It shouldn't be a big thing.  The mission is over.  Some of us survived, against overwhelming odds.  Now everyone is licking their wounds, saying heartfelt goodbyes, and leaving, returning to whatever they were doing before, or moving onto something new.

It shouldn't be a big thing, but here we stand not a pace apart, just staring at each other without anything useful to say.

 _Don't go_ comes to mind.  Useless.  There's nowhere to stay.  I don't even know where I'm headed next.  Is my lot in my second chance at life just to be Cerberus's latest puppet?  Do I spend the next few years choosing between slaughtering people and stepping on throats to get what I want, or letting myself get jerked around to make what I want a little easier to grasp at?

What do I even want anymore?

Maybe I've almost died a few too many times lately.  The concept of life and death leaves me feeling lazy and indifferent.

The concept of saying goodbye to Samara makes me feel...

 _You are so good_ , I want to say, _and I..._

But that's as stupid as anything else.  She's chosen her way of dealing with extreme grief, and I've chosen mine.  She follows her code, I...I don't know.  Drink too much and pick fights, I guess.  What would a mind meld with Samara even be like?  Would her righteousness overwhelm my senses, like the Ardat-Yakshi she bore? 

She sees the better side of me when I can help it.  Would seeing the deepest inner truth of who I am, who I've been, disgust her?  Would her code really compel her to kill me, even after all this?

I used to like to think I meant well, at least, even if my temper usually got the better of me.  Since this whole thing started, or my life restarted, or whatever, I'm not so sure anymore.  Sometimes I think I lost sight of where my anger ended and I began.

"Shepard," she begins now, but if she'd intended to follow it with anything in particular it's already died on her lips.

I open my mouth as though to say something in response, hold out my hands in a show of defeat, remain silent.

She approaches.  Sometimes asari don't seem like they've been alive for centuries, but Samara carries the gravitas of her existence in the way she walks.  She reaches for my hands and I offer them, too overwhelmed to understand her intentions as her approach continues.  We are toe to toe, hand to hand, and now forehead to forehead, and I feel the familiar sensation of the rest of the world disappearing around me as we enter a time and space of our own.

I've never been a crier, yet now I think I feel the distant sting of approaching tears.  It's...beyond words.  Beyond anything I can even fully understand.  Sometimes asari don't seem like they've been alive for centuries, but Samara carries the weight of every century, every decade, every year, every last day she has lived in this world she has invited me into, and I can _feel_ it.

She kisses me then, and there, in the place she's created for the two of us, divorced from the world where we must go our separate ways. 

When our lips have parted, she says to me, in that voice that carries the gravitas of her existence, "There is such light in you, Shepard."

I realize I've been wondering all this time why a second chance for me should have been worth pouring endless resources into, and mostly coming up short.  Sure, I'm good at what I do, and sure, I don't mind getting my hands dirty, but the same could be said of half of Omega.  Light in me?  I fail to see anything particularly redeeming.

"You sure about that?" I wonder in response.  My voice has felt hoarse since we came back, but I barely remember screaming.

I can't meet Samara's eyes, even here, or maybe especially here, but I can  see the small, sad smile she offers me.  "I swore myself to one of the strictest codes known to the galaxy to ensure my own righteousness," she says.  "I knew I could not trust the strength of my will alone to do what needed to be done.  You..."

I...?  I, what?  I don't have any family, or even any real home.  I'm sure ruthless devotion to an impossible task isn't quite as simple or straightforward when you have the kinds of things people say are worth living for.

"I have seen you do things, allow things, that would compel me to violence against you if I were not sworn to your service," Samara continues, and I'm not sure why the comment stings.  Of course she has.  A far less stringent code of justice would line up pretty neatly against me on my best days.  But I feel the sting nonetheless, and so must Samara, because we are as one now in this place she has made for us.

"Many call you ruthless," Samara continues, somehow even softer, gentler than usual, "and I can see clearly now that you believe it of yourself, as well.  But I have seen how you care."  She holds my face in her hands and kisses me again, and for a second I think maybe I could believe her.

I squeeze my eyes closed, but I'm not sure what I think I'm hiding from.  "I'm going to miss you," I whisper at last, and it's as true as anything else I can think of to say.

I feel Samara's fingers beneath my chin now, willing me to find the courage to meet her eyes, and I have to swallow hard before I do it.  It's hard to imagine there could be any more in the darkness of her eyes than there is in the physical world, but somehow here she is...infinite.  All-encompassing.

"And I, you, Shepard," she says, with the same small, sad smile.  "But the people who touch our hearts never really leave us, do they?"  She looks up from me.  "Look at this space we've created together.  It is..." her smile widens, just a little bit, and it reaches her eyes in a way her smiles usually don't. "...beautiful."

And I look, too, and I, too, am compelled to smile at the majesty of our private universe.  I've been thinking of it as a space Samara created, unable to fathom that I could have had any part in its beauty, but as surely as I can feel Samara's waist beneath my hands, I can feel the fabric of this place emanating from my own skin.

Samara returns her attention to me.  She runs her fingertips over the jagged scars of my face, as though her touch alone might heal them.  "There is such light in you, Shepard," she says again, and her tone is at once gentle and quietly vehement.  "Do not forget that."

I catch her hands in mine and hold them against my face for a moment.  I can feel that our time here has to end, may have gone on too long already.  There are things to do, places to be, and Samara is returning to Thessia, and I am...

The physical world returns in fragments, or maybe in a mist, and all at once I'm standing on solid ground again, and Samara is still holding my face in her hands, but her head is bowed and her eyes are closed.  Her brow furrows subtly, and at last, she lets go, steps back, and turns to go without even looking at me again.

I sink to the floor in the place where she usually sat to meditate, and contemplate the dark expanse of distant stars outside the window that will never again be hers.


	2. not quite a beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is kind of a separate one-shot, but also kind of connected, and I am Worst Organizer, so here it is. Contains spoilers for the Ardat-Yakshi monastery mission in ME3, discussion of suicide.

It is a gruesome war.

Shepard thought she knew what an atrocity looked like, thinks she sees one every morning when she catches sight of herself in the mirror, but it seems the universe is determined to surprise her.  Everywhere they go, something worse.

The monastery is somehow particularly jarring.  Maybe because of Liara.  For all she has hardened in the years since Shepard's death, there remains in her a kind of naivete Shepard almost envies.  When she looks upon the husks of her own people, it's like the true horror of the situation finally really hits her in some new and horrible way.  Shepard despises the irritation that flares up in her veins, listening to genuine sorrow.

Maybe it's because Samara shows up, and the sight of her nearly sends Shepard reeling, when she'd thought nothing really could anymore.  Samara's daughters are here.  Samara's daughters are nearly lost.  Suddenly it's like the world speeds up, or slows down, like an adrenaline rush or looking through the crosshairs of a rifle.  Samara produces a weapon, her daughter flinches, Shepard thinks she might be trembling all over, but cannot bring herself to breathe, Samara points the gun...at her own temple.

"What are you _doing?!"_

There was a time, Shepard thinks, as they cascade to the stone floor in slow motion, when she might have let it happen.  There was a time, she thinks as she rends the weapon from Samara's trembling hands, when she'd have balked, thought _none of my business_ , thought _maybe it's better this way_ , and watched a woman she almost loved take her own life.

"There's no other way, Shepard.  I won't kill my only remaining daughter.  The code dictates--"

Shepard takes Samara's face between her hands.  "This can't be the only option, Samara," she says, low and fierce.  "How can you throw your life away like this?"

It's truly bizarre that Thane's death should have had such a strong effect on her.  Even for former squadmates on what should have been a suicide mission, they were never close on any personal level.  She'd made it abundantly clear what she thought of his spiritual crap, and they'd stuck to other topics whenever they were stuck talking at all.  However her team needs to justify what has to be done is none of her concern unless it gets in her way.

Maybe it's what Samara said to her before, and elsewhere-- _there is such light in you_.  Feels like another lifetime now.  Maybe it's this war, and the weight it's heaved onto Shepard's shoulders.  Maybe it was the moment, one of those singular things that stands apart from time in the aftermath of a battle.  But when Kolyat asked Shepard to read their prayer for forgiveness, Shepard agreed.  And when the poem said "she" and not "he", Shepard asked why.  And when Kolyat told her that Thane's dying wish, his final conscious act, was to ask forgiveness for Shepard, she felt like she might cry, and she had to turn away.

And everything has been different since then.

Samara's daughter intends to seclude herself in the monastery.  Just...live alone in an old stone building so she can never hurt anyone.  That means Samara gets to live, and let her live.  Seems pretty fucked from where Shepard is standing, but Samara and one of her daughters are still alive, so she'll call it a win.

Samara waits with them for the Normandy's return, and Shepard sends Liara and Garrus ahead.

"Shepard," says Samara quietly, and it's not quite a beginning, but at least it's not an end.

Shepard feels her hands shaking.  She clenches them into fists at her sides.  "Maybe as a personal favour you could try not shooting yourself from here on out," she says through gritted teeth.  She is shivering, and she can't tell if it's from the cold.

"Shepard."  A hand on her shoulder.  Warm.  Infuriatingly calm. 

Shepard places a hand over Samara's, but can't look at her.  "Are you...okay?" she wonders, haltingly.  What she doesn't quite manage to say is, _will I ever see you again?_

"The code has been satisfied," says Samara.

Shepard turns on her at last, emboldened by the warmth of rising fury.  "Is that really all it was, Samara?" she challenges.

Samara's brow furrows, ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly.  "I've tried to tell you before, Shepard, that we do not all possess your strength of will."

Shepard feels a horrible tightness in her throat, and she swallows hard, clenches her hands into tighter fists.  There are so many things she wants to say that she manages none of them, and instead glares in silence at a grieving woman.  She wonders if a better person would see that Samara needs understanding and know how to provide it.

"I could not lose her, and I cannot defy the code," says Samara plainly, when Shepard does not speak.  "And...yes.  I just watched Rila sacrifice herself, and it hurt me.  You are right, Shepard.  I was quick to a desperate solution.  Because I was... I am..." she averts her eyes.

"I'm not..." Shepard approaches, halting and awkward, with all the wrong words, "...angry...with you.  I'm..." she reaches out, almost withdraws, but Samara takes her hands.  "Will I ever see you again?"

Samara smiles, then.  It's a sad, distant sort of expression, but it's a far cry from the way she looked only a moment prior.  "I would like that," she says, gently. 

And it's not quite a beginning, but at least it's not an end.


End file.
